Rotting From The Inside Out
by MintSauce
Summary: Prompt from anon who wanted a fic about the hoodie Mickey wears and how he got it off Ian.


**For an anon, who wanted me to somehow write about the hoodie Mickey wears and how he got it off Ian…..**

It's a long time before Mickey can make himself move. It feels like every part of his body hurts, but it's more than that. His fucking insides hurt in a way that's different from a cracked rib or internal bleeding. No, this is a horrible twist in his gut and in his heart that comes from having that fucking look on Ian Gallagher's face branded behind his eyelids.

It's all he can see every time he blinks and it burns, it fucking burns his brain.

He didn't have a clue he'd even moved until he was gripping the sides of the toilet and retching into it, the insides of his stomach splashing up the sides of the bowl and an acrid taste and smell clogging up his sense. He can see that he's just smeared blood against the white porcelain and he doesn't even care, can't bring himself to. He can't bring himself to look away from the way that the red stains his knuckles though either. It's darkening in places, turning black just like his soul feels sometimes.

Except he'd felt so alive. He'd actually let himself be happy, had let himself believe for just one moment that it could all be alright. That maybe he and Gallagher could really do this. Mickey knew that he should have known better than think that he could ever have anything good. Because one minute it had been the hot press of Ian's hands against his hips and then the next it had been nothing but the flare of pain as his father's fist connected with his face.

But no, as much as his face and his body hurts, it's still his heart that hurts more. The heart that's pumping, burning poisoned blood around his broken body every second. He can feel himself rotting away from the inside out, can feel himself going bad, turning sour. Because he hadn't been before, maybe a little bit, but he hadn't been rotted through right to the core. Gallagher had always been that thing that had been _good_, that no matter how many bad things he'd done, earning one small smile from the redhead had made it seem less bad.

_He should have known_.

Somehow he manages to drag himself on shaking limbs off the bathroom floor and he collapses boneless onto his bed, the hard mattress feeling like he's landing on a bed of rocks right then and the harsh squeal of springs slicing through his brain like a red hot knife. Everything hurts, absolutely everything; but it's not like Mickey doesn't deserve it.

It was a stupid, stupid, _stupid_ move bringing Gallagher over here. It was clumsy, sloppy and Mickey didn't do fucking sloppy. He should have seen it coming. Should have known. He wondered if maybe on some level he had done.

He shifts in annoyance with what feels like a zipper starts digging into his eye and he forces the top half of his body up off the mattress awkwardly so that he can drag out the offending object. And he would have just thrown it out, would have launched it as far across the room as his broken body could have managed. If he didn't suddenly recognise what the hell it was he was holding through that one non-swollen shut eye.

It's that stupid hoodie that Mickey had literally almost ripped from Gallagher's body the moment that they'd reached the bedroom, too desperate, too needy with the desire to feel Ian's naked flesh under his palms. It had obviously gotten stuffed down underneath the pillow at some point and Ian hadn't exactly had time to check that he had all of his stuff when Terry had thrown him out. Makes sense he would have left it behind.

When he presses it against his face, no doubt smearing drying blood onto the inside, for a moment all he can smell is cheap shampoo, lime bodywash and Ian and Mickey lets himself break down with his face crushed into the fabric and his knuckles white as he grips it to him. He lets himself shatter for longer than he'd like to admit, before he puts himself back together with self-made promises of, _never again_ and reassurances that, _people like Ian are too good for people like him anyw__ay._ He tells himself that he's not going to be so stupid again, he's not going to slip up this time, because there isn't going to be another chance for him to put Gallagher in danger like that.

And that's what he tells himself as he walks into the house after speaking to Mandy about the car she's fucked up. He just pulls the sleeves down over his hands and brings one cuff to his nose, sniffed subtly just to try and detect some sort of scent of Gallagher. And he won't cry, he _won't_, because he's going to cling to this hoodie like it's a fucking symbol.

He told himself that beating the shit out of Ian was the right thing to do, it was the best thing to do in the long run, because it didn't matter how much it burned Mickey up inside to walk away from him like that, a broken hearted Ian was so much better than a dead one. This way, Gallagher could keep his life and Mickey would keep the redhead's hoodie.

And maybe in a few years, he could look at it like some long lost momento of what could have been and the thought wouldn't make his insides twist in pain. Maybe, but he doubted it.


End file.
